The New Religion

By Chris Abani b. 1967 Chris Abani

The body is a nation I have not known.

The pure joy of air: the moment between leaping

from a cliff into the wall of blue below. Like that.

Or to feel the rub of tired lungs against skin-

covered bone, like a hand against the rough of bark.

Like that. “The body is a savage,” I said.

For years I said that: the body is a savage.

As if this safety of the mind were virtue

not cowardice. For years I have snubbed

the dark rub of it, said, “I am better, Lord,

I am better,” but sometimes, in an unguarded

moment of sun, I remember the cowdung-scent

of my childhood skin thick with dirt and sweat

and the screaming grass.

But this distance I keep is not divine,

for what was Christ if not God’s desire

to smell his own armpit? And when I

see him, I know he will smile,

fingers glued to his nose, and say, “Next time

I will send you a down as a dog

to taste this pure hunger.”

Source: Hands Washing Water (Copper Canyon Press, 2006)

Biography

Chris Abani is part of a new generation of Nigerian writers working to convey to an English-speaking audience the experience of those born and raised in that troubled African nation. Abani began writing at a very young age and published his first novel, Masters of the Board, while still a teenager. The plot of the novel, a political thriller, proved uncomfortably close to actual events; it mirrored a coup that was carried out in . . .

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